


Make It Fashion

by junkshopdisco



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Crossdressing, M/M, Model Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 08:59:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2541875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkshopdisco/pseuds/junkshopdisco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fashion shows are better on social media. At least that's what Nick thinks before model and worldwide trending joke of the hour Harry Styles falls for him</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make It Fashion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MoonBalloon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonBalloon/gifts).



> With thanks to MoonBalloon for an awesome prompt and the A for the stellar betaing <3

Backstage at fashion shows is better in pictures. Nick learnt this years before Instagram was even a thing, so it’s not a surprise that the whole thing would’ve been more enjoyable condensed into a nice montage or with a filter slapped on even before he gets elbowed in the kidneys by some 18 year old with a name like Kevin and a face shaped like a kitchen sink. He grabs a glass of champagne as it’s passing, borne aloft by a stony expression, greased back hair, and impeccable manicure, and makes an appropriately neutral face, nods politely as the assistant to the designer’s assistant flaps a clipboard under his chin in a vain attempt to shift the Manhattan mugginess.

“September is _the worst,_ _”_ the assistant to the assistant says, as if it’s something desperately profound. Which it might be; having caught a flight at midnight after an ill-advised birthday party, accepted two glasses of red wine to go with a film about football, and come straight here in a taxi that smelt of kale farts, Nick can’t tell, and the aggressively cold white lighting isn’t helping.

He messages Alexa to ask where the fuck she is, the early pricking of a hangover hovering behind his eyeballs – which is not fucking fair, he’s still getting drunk, here – and sips his champagne even though he’d much rather be pounding a Diet Coke.

“It’s such a unique space, isn’t it?”

Great. It’s like he’s stuck at a crap wedding with the aunt of the only person he knows. It’s a lie too, the space thing – they’re in a pier and everything smells of gone-off mud, although someone has in fairness thrown a lot of fabric at the walls and put some very artful creases into it. The assistant to the assistant waves over a guy with white blond hair and a pinched smile who, if he stood too close, might disappear into the draping. Good look, completely headless. 

“This is Troy from _The New Yorker_. Troy, meet Nick Grimshaw. He’s a DJ, and ambassador for British fashion.”

Troy gives Nick’s suit the once over, lips going from cat’s arse to grimace and back again. “And how are you finding New York so far Nick Grimshaw DJ and fashion ambassador from Britain?” Troy sticks his phone in Nick’s face.

“Well the airport was very nice, taxi a little noxious in both air and music quality,” Nick says.

Troy lifts an eyebrow. Not a joking crowd. Ok then. Nick does what he does sometimes at fashion parties and pretends to be Alexa. “I adore it here. They say, don’t they, New Yorkers are more British than any other Americans.”

“Right.” Troy is more interested in the needle on his phone app fluctuating than any words Nick could possibly conjure. “And you’ll be seeing many of the shows?”

“Just this one actually.”

“Why this show in particular?”

Nick swallows. Mostly he’s here because the guy he’s steadfastly not been dating finally had enough of the not dating thing and is moving all his shit out. “Fancied a weekend away and I have friends here.”

“You know the guys from _Britain_ _’_ _s Next Top Male Model_?”

“I watched it – on after the Kardashians in’t it? Great in the face is that Zayn M – ”

“You think British men are inherently more at ease with cross-dressing?”

“Well I like a high heel as much as the next person but I don’t think that’s, like, a national – ”

“Interesting. So the guy who didn’t win, this Henry – ”

“Harry.”

“Yeah. Do you think he’s just a novelty? Loser people like?”

Nick’s _errrrrr_ drags on longer than the one he gave his mum when he was fifteen and she asked for a reasonable explanation of where the Vaseline she bought to do her hair dye with kept going. “I hear he’s really funny,” Nick says. “My friend who writes for _The Independent_ met him, said he juggled falafel, it was hilarious.”

The assistant to the person doing the seating touches Nick’s elbow. “Sorry for the abandonment,” she says in a flat Brooklyn accent. Nick wants to marry her. “We’re ready for you.”

She steers him past a rail with the scantest selection of clothing Nick has seen anywhere outside of some of the less savoury windows in Soho. Her seaweed-coloured hair makes a tight knot on the top of her head and her glasses are very, very thick pink and very, very fashion forward. At home Nick would say so, but at home, he’d know who she was. Here everyone seems to take everything so seriously and he doesn’t want to get deported. 

“Great, thanks,” he says as she delivers him to his seat. It’s on the front row and he sinks onto the bench, the rest empty. Christ, he hopes no one’s getting a picture of him all Billy no mates, although it was good enough for Anna Wintour. He goes to say something witty about it to the assistant, but she’s already gone, so instead he checks his phone. No reply. From anyone. Even though it’s disgusting o’clock in London, he sends a group message: a picture of the screens which are displaying a series of black and white stills that look like a human jaw but could also be the side of a building shot from an arty angle. Matt Fincham replies:

_You actually flew to New York for a fashion show? Isn_ _’_ _t that a bit poncey? Even for you?_

Nick sends him a random series of emojis that happen to be sitting in his recently used, knowing Matt will spend at least half an hour trying to work out what they’re supposed to spell out. He opens Instagram and flips the camera so his own nose appears but the Hudson seems to have migrated into the air for the occasion and is soaking slowly into his hair. And his collar. And, well, everything, giving him the appearance of a sweaty tomato wearing someone else’s Burberry. He posts the picture anyway, texts Alexa again, just a string of SOS and red light emojis, and flicks through Instagram where yep, there it is, a runway in a marquee montage that’s ever so much more entertaining than actually being here overly aware of the position of his own ankles.

A woman with two-inch long nails painted to resemble marble and a floor length coat in white silk takes the seat next to him with her friend, who Nick’s sure is a model. Or at least he recognises her neck from the backdrop to a perfume counter in Selfridges. He smiles a hello but they both ignore him, and why wouldn’t they when he smells like damp and the aeroplane peanuts he threw back as some kind of late night snack come breakfast come drunkenness stopper.

The seater’s assistant comes back, trailing Hugh Jackman and a phalanx of photographers. Nick makes an effort to sit up straight – chest out, stomach in, stick his forehead out to hopefully create the illusion of a jawline in the pictures that are presumably being taken behind the flashes going off – and when Hugh slides in next to him he’s all neatly pressed Armani grey and vetiver scent as if he’s sweating it. Great, they’re going to look like an elegant Disney villain and his pet salad vegetable. 

“Good to see you, mate,” Hugh says, teeth glinting perfect Hollywood as if they’re actually ch-ching-ing.

Nick’s 88% certain Hugh has no idea who he is, just vaguely recognises him from the three or four interviews they’ve done, so he says hello back, asks how he’s doing, and when things get awkward because Nick can’t remember a single film he’s been in, gets his phone out to tweet:

_Never sit next to an A lister at fashion week unless you want to feel like a disgusting hungover tomato_

He adds appropriate emojis and clings to his phone and thank god, the lights go out and the music starts, a house track with a BPM that would signal terminally low blood pressure in a human.

The crowd stills. Nick shifts forward to peer down the row. At the start of the raised concrete block catwalk the screens go fizzy. The first model appears, stares into the middle of the universe as he stomps down the runway in four-inch patent black heels, dragging a wheelie-suitcase behind him. The giant screens behind him flare, his satin-clad crotch displayed between bursts of imitation static intercut with a ghostly impression of his face. At the end, he pauses, one shoulder thrown back in defiance, turns, stalks past Nick to reveal there’s no arse – none whatsoever – in the knickers he’s wearing. It’s a miracle of modern engineering they’re staying up and fuck; Alexa should be here so he can say so to someone without sounding like a pervert.

The next guy – all ginger hair and freckles – is already strutting past like a pissed off ostrich, corset and black feather angel wings completely incongruous with the messenger bag slung across his torso. Nick doesn’t know whether to look at him or who’s next, but at Nick’s side, Hugh Jackman says, “Lord have mercy,” while staring at the gap the guys are appearing from. Swings it.

Two feet down the runway are a pair of legs right out of Robert Palmer’s _Addicted to Love_ video. Nick follows the curve of thigh up under flimsy lace at the edge of a pair of knickers, skims the tattoos poking up over the waistband, all the way up his chest to shoulders slipping free of a silky black dressing gown as it billows behind him like a cape. Harry Styles: the reason Nick hasn’t been out on a Wednesday evening in 12 weeks.

Harry lets the slippery shoulder fall, glancing over it as he reaches the end of the runway, hair flicking as if there’s a tiny wind machine stuck to his collarbones. He pirouettes to come back, hand trailing as if down an imaginary highly polished balustrade, the other clutched around the handle of a laptop bag. He looks a bit like a very sexy, ridiculously rich executive who’s downright bored of firing people for harassing her.

Hugh grips the edge of the bench, whistling out a breath, and Nick wonders what the fuck he was expecting from a glossy black invite embossed only with the brand name – not a house known for its nun-wear – and the words _do you dare, boys?_ Granted, the flicker of Harry’s gaze over everyone in the front row is moderately affecting but really, have some dignity, Jackman. Nick wafts at his face with his phone because seriously, this is the muggiest venue in the history of venues.

Harry’s eyes catch his gaze and gift him a momentary but remarkably well fleshed out fantasy about backing him against a wall before he slips behind the screen. Next up is Kevin and his sink face. He’s wearing a one-piece body thing in lace with a plain black backpack, and, if the shifting of everybody on the bench is anything to go by, exposing slightly more dick than was expected.

Another five or six stomp past, Nick’s brain too dazed by champagne, early onset jet lag, and the persistent image of Harry Styles’ thighs to take any of them in, then comes Zayn, actual winner of the show in which Harry came third, thong hanging off his hips, his only accessories large geeky glasses which Nick supposes pass for work wear at a squint.

They all form a V for the final prowl out, perfectly in step under the bass line crescendo and applause raining from somewhat disbelieving palms. Harry’s face is hidden behind an angel wing. Nick cranes, smiles as it shifts so he’s properly in view, and lines his phone up to snap a photo. Nick hits the button, just capturing the corner of Harry’s mouth twitching into a proto smile. He’s framing another one when on the little screen in his hand, Harry’s perfectly, beautifully impassive face buckles from underneath him. He pitches forward out of the camera app window – Nick looks up at the real version, recoiling – and flings the laptop bag out for balance which never comes. Nick pictures all the assistants and assistants to the assistants in slow motion, halfway through a relived, congratulatory clap, retracting it before it’s properly formed, their hands flying in horror to their mouths. He gasps on their behalf as well as Harry’s as Harry lands on his knees, silky dressing gown wafting up all around him like a billowing exhalation.

The photographers at the end of the runway go fucking _nuts_.

Nick shifts half the way up to standing to see if Harry’s all right. Under the rave of lighting, Harry mouths _owwww_ – Kevin the sink-faced fucker steps around him _without even pausing_ – and it’s almost like some kind of modern art piece on pornography, the way Harry’s satin-clad arse is huge on all the screens behind him, his head dipped between his shoulder blades. He lets out a single breath of laughter or a sob – Nick actually can’t tell – takes a moment, and jumps back onto his heels. He wobbles as he gets up, focusing on something on the wall, his face going red and his cheeks shaking. The moment where he waits there for Zayn to pass so he can re-join the end of the line takes a frigging _millennia_ to happen but he gets the foot right, and he makes a decent stab of it, acting like it didn’t happen, even though one of his knees is weeping crimson.

The music fades out and the applause goes on, confused and a bit hysterical, until it peters out so everyone can turn to their neighbour and decide what emotion to have. The neck model leans in to show marble nails a Vine of Harry toppling but never hitting the floor. Marble nails declares it very now, checks her watch, and says they have to leave otherwise they’ll be late for Givenchy.

“Well you don’t see that everyday,” Hugh says. He claps one final time, offering Nick his hand as he gets up. “Good to see you again, mate.”

“You too. Good luck with the – er – thingy.”

 

 

*

 

 

Backstage after a fashion show is undoubtedly also better as a social media experience, but only if you’re not the one troubling the lower end of the worldwide trends for failing to stay upright. Nick glances at Harry on the other side of the room. The draping has wilted behind him, his heels he’s kicked aside, and the dressing gown puddles like oil around his middle, all the other models giving him a wide berth as he scrolls on his phone with a waxy expression that’s exactly the midpoint between terror and disbelief. It’s the saddest thing Nick’s seen since Pixie dropped her Bambi handbag in dog poo. He takes refuge in his own messages and there’s one from Alexa:

_Traffic! ARGH!! See you at the party?_

Troy slinks past, phone clutched to his ear. When he sees Nick he pauses, meets Nick’s eye, covering the microphone. “Any comment on the incident?” he says, as if it’s already achieved a status denoting capitals.

“No one should look that good on their knees,” Nick says, and raises his voice loud enough for it to carry over the heads of the models scurrying to their next show and the chatter of the hairdressers to Harry. “Harry Styles is the best thing that has ever happened at Fashion Week.”

Harry looks up, lips parted, eyes nervy.

Troy’s mouth hesitates as if he can’t tell whether or not Nick’s being sarcastic, so Nick grabs a pair of cocktails with a copse of mint in, and strides over to Harry, one of the glasses thrust out in a sort of _please don_ _’_ _t think this is extremely weird_.

Harry’s fingers curl around the glass and he stares at it as if he doesn’t know quite what it is.

“How bad’s that hurt, then?” Nick says. “Concrete runway, whose bright idea was that? Should’ve put a play mat down for you. You should sue. For that _and_ them shoes. Obviously had not been adequately tested for health and safety.”

“Oh yeah, I – won’t probably but thanks,” Harry says. His voice is lower than it sounded on the telly and the smile is less kerching-y than Hugh’s. It falls off his face as he tries to stand. He juggles his cocktail between his hands and clutches Nick’s in an approximation of a shake. “Harry, nice to meet you. Love your – you know, thing. With the – when you call people and then you’re mean to them for no reason.”

Nick waves him back down onto his chair, stomach whirring like one of those foil windmill on a stick things you only ever saw at beaches in Prestatyn that your parents wouldn’t buy you because they were cheap and holy fuck balls Harry listens to his show. “You need a first aider or a nana to spit on a hanky or something?”

“S’fine. I mean bruise-wise it’s barely a five,” Harry says. “Ego… _slightly_ worse. More like an eight point seven five.”

“Don’t think nana spit’s the cure for that.”

“I don’t think there even is a cure for that.”

Nick wants to ruffle his hair and pull him into his stomach for a cuddle, which is not the emotion he thought he’d have while stood next to Harry Styles when his thighs and his chest and his very nearly everything are on show. He fixates on Harry’s knees because surely they’re safe enough – no one has erotic fantasies about knees – but Harry’s looking at him looking, making a face like, _what?_ and if he’s not careful he’ll be here all night, caught in some kind of staring vortex with a jut of bone, a lump that shouldn’t be there, and a dribble of blood. He fishes his pocket square out, lays it on the counter next to a couple of pots of foundation, and hooks a few ice cubes out of his mojito, dropping them into the silk and wrapping them up into a little bundle of new season camo print and cold. “Here,” he says, gesturing for Harry to put it on his knee. “It’s no nana spit but whatever.”

Harry takes it with a not-quite huff of laughter, holds it next to his skin, wincing as he adjusts it. He takes a sip of cocktail, grimacing as the mint goes up his nose. “Tell me honestly, how bad did it look?”

“Can’t speak for everyone else but me and Hugh enjoyed the view.”

Harry presses the ice harder into his knee. “I feel like… like, you ever have one of those stress dreams?”

“All the time. Wake up in a cold sweat because my brain’s gone on the rampage imagining all the equipment in the studio’s broke so I have to sing all the songs and talk in between and hope no one notices.”

“Be funny that, though.”

“So was your comedy fall. Proper good flail you did – it looks amazing on Vine.” Nick waves his arms out in an approximation and Harry shakes his head. “Tyra would’ve been impressed with how you made it fashion, I reckon.” Nick turns to sit on the counter, crossing his ankles. “And just think, no one’ll be talking about anyone or anything else tomorrow. Couldn’t pay for as many clicks as this is going to get. They should triple whatever your fee is. I’m serious,” he adds when Harry frowns, disbelieving. “The world doesn’t need another sourpuss staring out the magazine rack draped in impeccable haut couture, but who doesn’t love a gorgeous guy on his knees in knickers on the front page? It’s my third favourite thing.”

“What’s one and two?”

“The collected works of Dr Dre and – er – crisps,” Nick says and Harry laughs, short and punchy and real. He stares at his knee for a moment before lifting Nick’s pocket square ice pack off and inspecting the skin beneath. Nick knows from experience it’ll heal long before anything else connected to this does. He bumps Harry’s shoulder with his glass. “You going to this party, then?”

“Allegedly, but – ”

“No buts. Come with me, have a few cocktails. You’ll be waiting for the headlines anyway, why not do it with a drink in your hand?”

“That what you did when you fell over dressed as Lily Allen?”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” Nick’s stomach is a seaside windmill foil wind farm. How does he know about that? “I’ll get the first round.”

“Drinks are free.”

“First two, then.”

Humming amusement, Harry gets gingerly to his feet. He meets Nick’s gaze from under giraffe lashes and without looking away, he undoes the dressing gown, tosses it aside, slides the knickers down his thighs, and steps out of them.

It takes Nick all the willpower he has ever had not to look down at him. “That a yes?”

“It’s a yes.”

Harry turns to retrieve his jeans from where they’re flung over the top of a mirror, the curve of his arse drawing Nick’s gaze like it’s attached by fishing line. _Lord have mercy_ rattles off his skull in Hugh Jackman’s voice but god’s evidently napping so Nick stares fixedly and purposefully at the evacuation plan on the wall. Stairwells. Orderly fashion. Don’t panic.

Harry squirms into his jeans before dragging a jumper – A/W Diesel, distressed holes and runs all over the shoulder – over his curls. He shakes them out and toes on his boots and it’s not fair how he looks better than Nick would if he’d spent all week planning an outfit and drinking nothing but green smoothies. “Is this ok?” he says.

“You’ll do,” Nick says, and leads him out by the elbow through an aggressive wheat field of paparazzi.

 

 

*

 

 

The theme of the party is apparently post-apocalyptic rave, the vision created by someone sticking a load of twitching kitchen lights to the walls and pumping out obnoxious techno. The drinks come in what Nick hopes is faux vintage science equipment and Harry looks at it all as if it’s the single most ridiculous thing to ever have happened.

“Welcome to Fashion Week,” Nick murmurs. “Reminds me of my first one, only back then there was more metallic footwear because god hated the noughties. I hope something didn’t die in this.” Nick clinks his beaker against Harry’s before knocking back the contents. “Oh Christ is that Crème de Menthe?” He coughs into his cufflink.

“Cockroach of the drink cabinet.” Harry eyes the pearly contents of his specimen jar, sets it on the poser table they’re apparently commandeering, and gets his phone out. A blast of flash and he squints at the screen while he thumbs in a caption. “You think it’s someone’s, like, job to find all this stuff?”

“Yeah and don’t act like prancing down the runway in your smalls is any less weird.”

“Technically they’re someone else’s smalls.”

“So that’s fine, then,” Nick says, and Harry smiles and knocks his shoulder against Nick’s. “What you tweeting?”

Harry hands his phone over. _This is not what it looks like. But maybe later @grimmers_

Nick meets his eye and at the lift of his eyebrow, Harry smirks and takes his phone back, fingers tickling over Nick’s quite unnecessarily. “Would follow you,” he says, “but I already do, so.”

Shitting hell. Nick must’ve forgotten to tick the box for _yes please notify me when people I fancy follow me on social media_. Think of all the times he could’ve drunkenly DMed him suggestive emojis instead of just sitting on the sofa reading the witterings of a not especially amusing fake Lana Del Rey. How little dignity would there be doing it right now while he’s right there? Nick gets his phone out but of course he has no signal.

“Imagine I just replied with something witty,” he says.

“What sort of witty? I need to know how to imaginary respond.”

“Ok when I said witty, I meant aubergine-shaped.”

Harry sticks his tongue out all the way like the lick emoji and if the intention is to make Nick stare at his mouth, well… played. He drags his focus back up to Harry’s eyes but they’re all knowing and make him feel a bit like he’s slipping into a lake of marshmallow. “So…. How long you staying?”

“At the party?” Harry says. “Dunno, just got here.”

“New York.”

“Dunno, just got here.” He goes all dimpled, looks down as if it’s a joke and he’s trying not to laugh. “I’m doing a thing in Central Park with Zayn – nice leaves, some aggressive pouting – then back home.”

“Home home?”

“London home. Assuming I haven’t been, like, fired.”

“No one gets fired because they tripped over.”

“First time for everything,” Harry says, swiping up his drink, eyes straying across the room to the gaggle of bloggers lit up like Hades by their phones. “How many of them are tweeting jokes about me right now do you reckon?”

“All of them, trying to outdo each other in the unimaginative bastard Olympics. Be more fun if they just came and talked to you. Bunch of pretentious fools.”

Harry smiles but it doesn’t really migrate up his face enough to have any emotion in it.

“If you want to fuck off out of here,” Nick says, touching his elbow, “there’s this little bar called Harry’s down the way. Reckon you’d look real good under the sign outside. I could take your picture, pick you out a really nice filter.”

Harry dips his chin to the neck of his jumper. “No, I’m fine,” he says, going back to his phone. Whatever people are tweeting at him makes him fiddle his hair into his eyes.

“You want to hear something really clichéd?”

“I don’t know, do I?”

“It’ll blow over.” Nick looks across to the bar, wondering if it’s time to get that second round in and a third while he's at it. “Only thing you can do to accelerate the wind speed or whatever is carry on doing other things for people to talk about.”

Between flashes of phosphorescent light, Alexa swings into view, hanging off the neck of some indie tartlet who Nick’s sure was on the front cover of _the NME_ smoking as if it was the single most rebellious thing anyone had ever done. She clocks him and clops over, platform shoes and red lips and eyes slightly too big as she throws herself at him in a flurry of kisses both air and not.

“Traffic, you said,” Nick says. “That the name of his band or he have hippie parents?”

“Hush. Not as if you didn’t keep yourself amused.” She glances pointedly at Harry, who’s staring at her as if he has suddenly encountered a t-rex.

“Harry Alexa, Alexa Harry.”

“Oh Harry from the TV show Grimmy’s _obsessed_ with,” Alexa says. “Cuuuuute. Did he show you all the pervy things he tweeted about you?”

“I favourited all of them.”

“Ok wow.” Nick fiddles with Alexa’s handbag as she shoves it onto the table, muttering, “Is this new? Nice, that,” too quietly for anyone to hear in order to better ignore the way Harry’s gaze swings towards him.

“Tell me honestly,” Alexa says, clutching his arm the way she does when she’s well and truly blasted. “Is this why you really came? The whole Derrick thing was a ruse, wasn’t it? You made him up.”

“Who’s Derrick?” Nick says.

“The guy – oh, aren’t we telling Harry about him?”

“Christ, can I not just miss you and fancy a weekend away?”

Alexa makes a face and Nick has the sense Harry’s staring at him. It’s a great moment, really, for the Crème de Menthe to punch him in the back of the head, knock to the front this not-quite thought that’s both _why didn_ _’_ _t anyone tell me when you tweet things people read them,_ and an Impressionist take on a not-relationship he really would quite like to snuff out. “If you mean _Devon,_ ” Nick says, “no he’s not a work of fiction and no we’re not talking about him, ever again.”

Nick glances at the stage where something very now is no doubt supposed to be happening later but in spite of it he seems to continue to exist. Arse.

“Why aren’t you dancing, then?” Alexa says, as if she’s had half a completely different conversation in her head. “People only invite you because you make a twat of yourself, get – ”

“Ta very much.”

“ – to it and show Harry we’re not all a bunch of stuck up joyless farts. I’ll join you when I’ve caught up.” She lifts her drink in promise, little finger out, and shoves Nick into what passes for the dance floor, a no man’s land between the bar and the plug sockets where at least five androgynous types with next season shoes on are trying to charge their phones.

Nick skids on the floor – this trend for polished concrete needs to fucking die before he does – and in the off-kilter strobe Harry cocks his head, intrigued or something that would look like it if glossed over in a magazine. Nick thinks _what the fuck_ and lifts his hands for a few test-the-water chest pumps and a hip swivel, none of which are in time with the music. It gets him a few strange looks but Nick would rather that than another round of dissecting his love life so he swivels and does the Mini-reversing dance move he learnt from one of the warm-up guys from the telly towards the gaggle of bloggers.

Alexa cackles into her test-tube, leans in to shout something in Harry’s ear, which makes him laugh and look back at Nick. It’s probably a story about Nick falling over into a fountain or chucking up in a handbag, or maybe the time he did both because he cracked his head on a peeing cherub’s willy. A blare of strobe whacks him right in the optic nerve, so Nick turns around and wiggles in Troy’s general direction to get away from it. He gives Troy a little wave and mouths, “Hiya,” and when that doesn’t work makes an exaggerated kiss face at him for so long it starts to feel as if no other expression will fit his face.

Troy takes a picture but doesn’t even break out a proper flicker of amusement. Whatever, Troy.

Nick turns around to go back to their table and Harry’s _right there_. Nick grabs for his imaginary coronary event before realising it probably makes him look like his own dad, tries to turn it into fingering his necklace as if that was where his hands were always heading.

Harry stares at him through his giraffe lashes.

At first Nick wonders if that’s Harry’s idea of dancing, standing abruptly close to people and staring at them, but Harry’s shoulder moves. Or – not quite, just a little punch underneath the arty holes of his jumper. It migrates up his neck to his chin and it’s almost as if it’s not him doing it, the music is vibrating the floor and it’s pulsing up his body. Really fucking pleased with himself, he meets Nick’s eye, lifts his hands above his head and some bit of him is gyrating but Nick probably shouldn't look down to tell what. Slowly, he does an orbit of Nick, turning around to brush Nick’s arse with his, grinning when Nick glances back to watch him return until they’re face to face again.

He’s dancing with worldwide trending topical joke of the hour Harry Styles, then.

The music has this awful thick, tinny beat that sounds like someone who possesses no discernable sense of rhythm striking a can with a pitchfork. Keeping up with it seems pointless and Harry’s definitely not trying to so Nick tries to drop it low before realising, knees at around 75 degrees, that these trousers are too tight and ends up doing a kind of horrible approximation of a boggle.

“Nice moves,” Harry says.   

“You should try it.”

Harry shakes his head, hand coming up to rest on Nick’s hip. It’s warm and overfamiliar and Nick sort of loves it. He moves Harry round like some kind of weird cog, and they set in motion a couple of girls shuffling, Alexa shouting, “Wooooooohooooo,” at nothing in particular.

A new track creeps in under the old, more poppy at least, beat like being stabbed with a knitting needle. Harry glances over Nick’s shoulder to the gaggle no doubt tapping away, looking down when Nick draws him closer.

“Stop worrying what they think,” Nick says. He drops his arm around Harry’s neck and leans in to aim his words more accurately through Harry’s hair at his ear. “Front pages’ll love you, you’ll see.”

Harry’s breath bumps against Nick’s face as he finds his ear to say, “Are you really sure?”

“ ‘Course I am.”

“Prove it.”

“What, like a bet or something?”

“Yep.” Harry ferrets under Nick’s jacket, finds the hem of his shirt where it’s come untucked at the back, casualty of the dancing war. His fingers are just the wrong side of not at all ticklish so Nick can’t use that as an excuse to assume he’s just having a laugh. Harry looks up, all slow and suggestive. “Not for money, though.”

Nick’s had one too many cocktails and four hours too few sleep and half a thought too many about Devon for that kind of look. He leans right into him. The smell of peaches tangles with his hair and below, his neck’s all strained and tanned and begging to be bitten. Nick focuses on the red shell of his ear but it’s like his knee and it have conspired to prove all his unsexy bits are nothing of the sort. He brushes it with the words, “Fine - if you get less than four covers, I’ll blow you, how’s that?”

Harry’s hand curls in on itself at the small of Nick’s back, and when Nick looks, his eyes have gone behind his lids, but his body presses closer. His lips attach to where Nick’s cheek disappears under sideburn and it’s not that far from a kiss. “What if – ” The next few words are nothing but breath and Nick has to guess what they were when Harry’s voice peeks out from underneath the clamour of the music again. “…more than four?”

“Well then everyone in here’ll be angling to get on their knees for you, won’t they? Won’t need me at all.”

Moving back, Harry eyes him through the techno. It’s not a runway gaze of studied evenness, more like the way he looked on the TV show when he found out “accidentally” all the guest agents said he didn’t have it while he was on his way to a shoot. Once there, he’d taken the most extraordinary vulnerable pictures the panel had ever seen and their words were not so much eaten as choked upon. Not that Nick watched that episode nine times or anything. “More than four,” Harry says, “and I’ll do you.”

“You’re on.”

Harry smiles something huge. “Just for like the record, though, I’m in a really weird place right now.”

Nick gestures at the stage, where nets are vogueing against the walls to some German techno that wouldn’t even go down well in Germany, “We all are, sweetheart. Make yourself at home.”

 

 

*

 

 

Nick has never been the type to wax poetical over a sunset but the one he lands under is the colour of sugar mice. By the time he’s out of the airport it’s deepened to a really pleasing orangey purple, clouds like old lady perms hovering over the skyline like something off the front of a postcard he’d actually send and not sneer at. He takes a snap through the taxi window and tweets it with a little Union Jack and a heart, rests his head on the window while he watches the likes jump up and four different people comment they were first. He fingers the holes on the sleeve of Harry’s jumper and his phone buzzes. The bubble on the front says:

_Harry_styles:_

_Good to lose a bet to you @grimmers .x_

Nick should play it cool but instead he tweets Harry the see no evil monkey and an aubergine, sinking down against the back of the seat. In the rucks of the jumper he sees Harry’s hand on his chest as they huddled into a corner and scrolled Twitter to see the first editions, the way he screwed the wool up when he realised he was five headlines and a meme. “Star of all the shows,” Nick said. “We better get out of here before RJ King draws a target on your back.”

They were unsuccessful in unhooking Alexa from Traffic’s face, stumbled out past the old pier, Harry saying the remains looked like abandoned tote bags and Nick questioning his sobriety. At Harry’s Bar they took a series of ludicrously awful selfies, and when they got kicked out because the sun was rising, lay in a park that was probably marked in all the tourist guides as dangerous with a bottle of tequila and no real interest in drinking it. Helicopters dodged the skyscrapers and Harry said, “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“I’m not even a hundred per cent what day it is. I feel like I’ve been awake literally forever.”

And the thing about a Harry Styles smile is when it’s for you it feels as if it’s entirely that, as if that park lounge fuck knows o’clock smile only happened once and Nick just happened to be there to catch it.

He woke up on monogrammed hotel pillows to a driver asking where the fuck he was on the other end of his phone, Harry’s feet on the adjacent pillow, their tops tangled together midway through a dance on the floor.

He’s had worse weekends.

Pig’s paws skitter on the wood in welcome and Nick drops his keys onto the table next to a note from the dog sitter and the spares, now devoid of their former owner’s key ring. The row that swung the decision to jet off the New York felt a million years ago while he was there but at the sight of it, its hands settle around his throat. He grabs a beer from the fridge and throws himself down on the sofa, fumbling the remote out from under a cushion to watch _Strictly_ on catch-up. He thumbs to the Devon’s twitter and it’s all passive aggressive song lyrics and sad smilies. It’s not really spite or anything but Nick takes a picture of his feet up, making sure just to get the bottom of Harry’s jumper in it and posts it before he has time to think better of it.

He wakes up to Monday with Pig drool on his knee, Matt Fincham messaging him a song he’s made up about jet lag to the tune of the new Pitbull, and a DM from Harry:

_nice jumper_

Nick smiles at it, sprays himself with deodorant, and wears the jumper to work.

 

 

*

 

 

_The studio smells like someone had curry in it. I blame Mills. You know he does that curry club thing just so he can cheat on his diet._

Harry messages him back a shocked face. _Can I have a shout out? Love Scott_

Nick looks up from the text into Ian’s annoyed face. He’s drumming his fingers on the desk, headphones worn like a necklace. “When you’re ready, Nick.”

“Sorry,” Nick says, although he’s not, not really, because Harry being a massive fan of where he works is as good an excuse as he’s ever going to get for the 1400 messages he’s sent him in a week and a half. It’s brand pride, nothing more, and certainly nothing related to the paparazzi footage of the Central Park shoot, Zayn and Harry draped across each other on a bench, Harry almost in a bra and Zayn absent-mindedly lifting up the bottom of a camisole.

“OK then,” Ian says, motions with his hands to say the entirely imaginary tape is rolling. “So we’ll have played Jessie Ware and _please_ let’s not have a repeat of last week’s – we’re not calling anyone you have saved as Shouty Mouthy Nutcase.”

“Jessie Ware there and now it’s time to play Call or Delete. Hiya Fearne.”

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this again,” Fearne says. “I am _not_ calling Ellie Goulding or anyone else of a pop star persuasion, it’s just too embarrassing.”

“Fearne’s favourite game everybody,” Nick says and claps. “How you been, Fearney?”

“Crap, I’ve been crap,” Fearne says. “I can’t sleep, can’t eat, thinking about this stupid game… I genuinely can’t believe you’ve roped me in.”

“This is what happens when you get drunk at the TV Quick Awards, you agree to things and – ”

“I was not at the – why are you like this?“

“I’ll go first, then, shall I?” Nick says, eying a text that’s just appeared from Harry.

_You too of course_

Nick ignores it but the string of aubergines which follow aren’t as easy to dismiss. Fearne huffs at him and drops both hands to her hips. “I’m scrolling, tell me when to – ”

“Stop!”

Nick looks down at his contacts, but having not opened them yet there’s only one name there. “Oh, it’s landed on Harry Styles.”

“Who’s – ”

“That model. Met him at a fashion thing.”

“Oh, not him off of falling over wearing ladies’ underthings?” Fearne says, eyebrows dancing in recognition. “Are you pals now?”

“Sort of.”

“Do you call him all the time, ask for selfie advice, that sort of thing?”

“We text… a bit.”

Fearne taps her fingers on her cardigan like she knows it’s code for _we snogged in a rough as fuck park as the sun came up and got partially naked in his room and when it wasn_ _’_ _t otherwise occupied he used his mouth to laugh a lot and so what, it was a very nice weekend and his emoji use is next level_.

“He leant me a jumper,” Nick says, and out loud it sounds like something he should’ve saved for confession.

“Definitely should call him, then. Was it a nice one? Would he go mental if you’ve shrunk it?”

“I don’t think anything’s really going to make him _go mental_ ,” Nick says. “He’s quite chill really. We could say I’m doing my own fashion line and does he want to model it?”

Nick looks across the desk at Ian, who shrugs and throws him the lead. Nick fiddles with the cable, plugging in the flailing end to the desk.

“Why don’t you say…. ” Fearne’s brow furrows. “You’ve got a date and you want to wear something that makes you feel really nice and…er….”

“And I want his help to pick out some men’s lingerie because he’s very fashion conscious, the date, and I want to make a good impression if things go well?”

Fearne laughs and says, “Yes, precisely.”

“Ok,” Nick says.

His stomach curdles as he hits _dial_.

The tone clips off as Harry answers. “Hello?”

“Hiya Harry, it’s Grim.”

“Hello,” he says again, this time making it sound soft and like a whole sentence. “How’re you?”

“Good, what you up to?”

Like Nick doesn’t know. Like he didn’t have something akin to a panic attack when he saw the pictures of Harry looking startled at Heathrow across all the gossip sites. Like he didn’t just this morning watch a single comma Harry presumably tweeted by accident rack up 48 re-tweets in the time it took him to blend a banana. Like he didn’t immediately message him to ask if he had been kidnapped or something and was tweeting a cry for help with his nose.

“Avoiding unpacking,” Harry says.

“What? You have actual clothes?”

There’s a creak and a murmur, one of the amused little sighs Harry does. “Need to get some. This flat’s on some sort of major bus route, which the estate agent didn’t mention. Keep forgetting those glass things are windows. The cleaner guy was shocked but understanding but it’s only a matter of time before there’s a school trip going past at the wrong moment.”

“You should set up a booth outside and charge.”

“Like a peep show?” He pauses as if he’s actually considering it. “I think that’d make me feel a bit objectified.”

“Isn’t that kind of your job?”

“Hey.”

“Sorry, I’m sure your job is _very_ intellectual and difficult.”

“Unlike talking on the radio. Did you ever like have to stare at a tennis ball on the end of a stick, pretending it was a tiger?”

“I should be so lucky frankly.” Nick face has gone sweaty all over the handset. “Listen, why I’m calling is, I need a favour.”

“Anything for you.”

Ian’s eyes widen as if, were he not on mic, he’d be whistling in juvenile fashion. Nick’ll confess the purring tone of Harry’s voice has gone straight to his knees.

“What it is – ” Some not-word lodges in Nick’s throat where _I have a date_ should be and he has to swallow to get it out of the way. “I sort of need some new underwear and the show – the one I saw you in – well, it inspired me to be a bit more… adventurous.”

“ _Really_.”

“So… could we go shopping? And you could sort of help me pick something out?”

“Yeah, man, sure. Like, today?”

“Yeah if you’re – ”

“I am.”

Nick’s stomach bounces up to his mouth as if he’s in the back of his mum’s car and they’ve gone too fast over a hill. He’s gone from having a fictitious date to a real one on false pretensces and it’s all too much to take.

“Oh, wait,” Harry says, “no I’ve a casting – thing but I’ll probably be done by four or five?”

“That would… work. Have you got any ideas what I should look for? I think I want something that’ll make the most of my legs? They’re my best feature.”

“Nope, they’re not.”

“Sorry?”

“Your eyes are your best feature. Or your freckles. Or your bum. Actually you have a lot of really nice features and I think it’s really mean of you to ignore them in favour of one. You always go on about your legs – and don’t get me wrong, they’re great, but the rest of you must feel so neglected, Nick.”

Nick looks around the studio, squashing his lips together, some feeling that’s not quite panic churning in his stomach. “Well that’s… very nice of you to say. You know somewhere we could go?”

“Not really but I could speak to my stylist friend? Maybe get you some samples? You’d look amazing in a basque, I bet, and stockings – we should definitely get you some of those.”

“So you can help me out? What colour do you – ”

“I’m a fan of the classic black but it’s more about the experience, you know? They feel so good when you put them on….” Something on the end of the line rustles again and when Harry speaks, his voice is lower and somehow more spread out. “Better when someone puts them on for you. I could bring some over,” he says and there’s a hint of something in it which makes all the hair on the back of Nick’s neck tense like someone very small has pulled it. “Or, if you’d rather, you could come to mine. Maybe I’ll model them, help you see what they look like from _all_ angles.”

Fearne shoves both sleeves of her cardie into her mouth.

Nick should hang up, pretend he’s gone through a tunnel, confess all, probably, or just shout, “Keep it PG, this is going to be on the radio!!” but instead he lowers his own voice and goes for, “That sounds like a great way to spend the afternoon, private show from Harry Styles.”

“Hmmm. Be fun for me too.”

“Better than open-air lounging with Zayn in a crop top?”

“ _Nothing_ is better than Zayn in a crop top. Might make my top four, though… Dr Dre, crisps, wearing stockings for Nick Grimshaw,” Harry breathes out, taking about a year about it, “sounds about right doesn’t it?”

“You alright there?”

“Mmmhumph. Just – thinking.”

And Nick clocks it then, what Harry’s voice sounds like. It sounds the exact way voices do when someone’s lying down. Brain going a hundred miles an hour through four different kinds of _oh shit, oh shitting shit_ , Nick looks at Ian for guidance. He’s chopping at his own throat with wild eyes but Nick can’t stop picturing it, Harry lying down, possibly in those clothes he doesn’t own, hair sprawling out from his face, smiling into his phone and inviting Nick over. “Are you…?”

“I’ve a _very_ vivid imagination.”

“I don’t. Help me out?” Ian looks like he’s mentally rewriting his CV and all Nick can do is shrug and leave his shoulders up by his ears.

“Well, there’s you,” Harry says, “picture what you’re wearing now, and I’m dressed up like Dita von Tesse, and maybe you’re on your knees, like, biting the waistband of the knickers I’m… hey do you think if we do fishnets that’ll be better or worse for carpet burn?”

“Oh so you’d have us on the floor like animals, Harry?”

“Or a sofa. I’ve one of those brown leather types, looks like it should live in a gentleman’s club. I got it at a flea market. I’m really glad you called.” There’s a shuffling and a muttered _oof_. “Sorry, dropped my phone switching hands so I can touch my – ”

Nick wrenches his handset free of the desk and holds it out in front of himself, cable dancing like his phone’s been eviscerated. Fearne’s eyes are approximately half a mile across and on the other side of the studio Ian’s face has gone the same shade as a this season berry lipstick. Obviously they all leapt to the same conclusion: the next words out of Harry’s mouth were not going to be _environmentally-conscious but still stylish upholstery_.

In Nick’s hand, Harry’s still talking and to preserve what’s left of his modesty, Nick presses the phone to his ear. At the other end it’s mostly breath and the slow shush of skin on skin. _Probably resting the phone on his chest to do it_ , Nick thinks, and hates himself for having enough experience of this kind of thing to be au fait with the logistics. Harry murmurs and Nick has no idea what to do. He went on a course – an actual frigging course – about how to stay within broadcasting guidelines while doing prank calls and at no point did the woman in the cheap but flattering pale blue suit offer any kind of instruction about what the correct protocol is to deal with a caller who starts wanking. Oversight. He’ll send an email. _How dare you not provide me with a five step plan for when some up and coming celeb tries to talk me through the finer points of his erection in the middle of a well-loved radio feature._

“Can’t wait until you get here, sorry,” Harry says, all sloppy and loose.

Nick makes a tactical retreat through the door into the enclave they use to eat in, waving off Ian’s objections and Fearne’s fluff-muffled _oh my gggggggggoddddddddd_. He screws his eyes closed and leans against the wall. It’s the one where they keep all the press clippings and he doesn’t have to look to know there’s an article about his own ratings around where his head is. The last thing he should say is, “Tell me how it feels?” but he does, anyway.

“Really good. I’m thinking about you running your hands over my legs – helping me do up some stockings – you ever do that?”

“Only with a friend who’s a drag queen but that was purely practical. You know when you go all zombie ‘cos you’ve had too much ketamine, couldn’t feel their extremities let alone get them into a custom-made neon yellow stiletto.”

Harry chuckles deep down in his throat and then it hitches.

Nick’s body prickles with the park and the helicopters, as if Harry’s right there again, poking him in the side and giggling at a bad joke – _which is the grumpiest part of a Continental breakfast? The croissant_ – the tone of it changing when Nick looked at him. His stomach goes a weird kind of brick like the same way it did in the second before Harry kissed him, all hesitant and bright-eyed he was, like a romance novel, even though Nick had already demonstrated he’s the kind of classless fucker who offers blokes he barely knows a blow job to prove a point about their career.

“You liked it, though?” Harry says. “Way I looked in the show.”

“Yeah, yeah I did.” Nick glances at the door to make sure Fearne and Ian aren’t leaning against it with a glass. “In my humble opinion, though, whoever hid you in that dressing gown needs their head examined. Should’ve been a corset all the way for you, Styles.”

“Need someone to help me out of that, though.”

“Not a problem.” Nick closes his eyes to try and keep the stirring of his own dick to a minimum. A nostril full of curry helps with that but not entirely all the way. “Although might be fun to keep you in it for a little while.”

“Yeah?”

“If you’d like that. Me all over you dressed like that.”

The air goes thin, like all the usual substance has been sucked out of it, and Nick wants to speak but doesn’t, afraid he’ll snap it somehow. Harry drags a breath in too loud, stalls on the out, and Nick’s done this enough to know he’s there. He waits for the sigh, the little laugh of _can_ _’_ _t believe we just did that_ , and when it comes, Harry’s giggles are slightly muffled like he’s shoved his face into a cushion. He probably got that at the flea market too.

“You good there?”

“Very, thanks,” Harry says. “You – what do you want me to –?”

“I’m in basically a cupboard at work that stinks of two week old biryani so no, I’m fine, ta.”

Harry laughs and murmurs, “Oh god you could’ve said.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Nick goes back into the studio, flustered all under the collar of his Kanye hoodie, and plugs his phone back in, gesturing for Ian to record without meeting his eye. “So we’re on for this shopping trip, then?”

“You, me, the knicker section,” Harry says. “It’ll be nothing like that episode of _Father Ted_.”

“Thanks, Harry, I got to go.”

“Ok, text me later and – remember the Scott thing, please.”

“Ok bye bye bye…” Nick hangs up. “Be fine when we edit it, right?”

Ian is grabbing handfuls of air as if trying to literally get back his grasp on the situation. “No,” he says. “I can’t – ”

“Iaaaaaannnnn, he’s lovely. And he felt so awful about the tripping thing – he told me he just wants an opportunity to show people he’s not an idiot.”

Ian clasps his forehead. “This is genuinely the fourth or fifth worst day of my life.”

“And we haven’t even called him back to explain yet. Get your phone, Fearne, I think you should do it. After you've pretended to be one of the head honchoes from his agency ringing to tell him I tried to get his address to surprise him and they think I'll be bad for his career.”

“Yes! Now _that_ is a great idea,” Ian says, reaching for his headphones.

Fearne sighs. “Have I mentioned,” she says, “how much I hate this game?”

 

 

*

 

 

Harry’s in Paris trying for a shot at a high-end shampoo campaign when the call airs. He listens anyway, tweets Nick right after it finishes:

_Looking forward to our date. I will bring the g string.x_

He doesn’t, sadly, show up fresh off the plane with one gripped between his teeth but he does send Nick a black shiny invite embossed with the words:

_London boys, are you ready?_

Nick adds it to his diary as three separate events with two reminders each, all of them just called: HARRY

 

 

*

 

 

Backstage at fashion shows is not improved by swapping one smelly river for another. Nick smiles at the woman who takes the branded umbrella he was given in order to endure the slight drizzle from the taxi to the front door of the gallery, offers his name, and is ticked off the list and ushered through a door into the bowels of the place. It smells entirely of car park and Nick follows the laminated signs, emerging into an impromptu dressing room space in what looks as if it might usually be a run-off gift shop. The same load of material’s been flung at the walls though and there’s more champagne on platters going around, but Nick ignores them.

Harry’s flanked by a giant vase of black lilies and one of those proper Hollywood mirrors with light bulbs all around it. He’s balancing on a suede shoe boot, encased in a corset and tight lace shorts that leave absolutely nothing for anybody’s imagination to fill in. He pulls the corset down, wiggling as he does with an incongruously serious expression behind a perfect low drape of his hair.

The woman kneeling nose level with his hip gives it a final tug, glancing up at him and saying something about the fit being much better now. She stands back to admire her handiwork and it’s weird, the way the room seems to still around him, like he’s wearing it, as if it only exists to be his backdrop and the second he blinks the lights will go out and everyone, Nick included, will disappear.

Nick wants to move into the moment, get all his things out and stay indefinitely, but Harry looks right at him, catlike, as if he knew Nick was there all along. _Can_ _’_ _t surprise me, Grimshaw_. Breathing out deliberately slowly, Nick picks his way through the other models and dressers, avoiding his gaze when it doesn’t fluctuate to the one that goes with familiar giggly phone Harry or the coy one from the park.

When Nick halts in front of him, Harry rocks on his heels, hand on his hip as if it’s that pressing his pelvis forward and compelling his back to arch. He lifts an eyebrow and the smile’s not quite as cocky as the one that’s been all over magazines both in the editorial spreads he’s done wearing shirts over frillies and the increasing number of shots courtesy of the paparazzi who seem to find him fascinating even when he’s nipping to the shop for a pint of semi-skimmed.

“So..?” Harry says, voice more full of trembles than usual, and Nick wonders if he’s interpreting his stunned silence as something other than what it is.

Not that Nick knows what it is. In the whole of his life the only time he’s felt this genuinely flabbergasted was when he went on a school trip to France and saw a very famous statue up close and personal. He didn’t know it was a Grand Master at the time — that wasn’t what stole into his mouth and nicked the words usually abundant there — he just thought it was a very good-looking marble bloke with curls and his cock out. Good a moment as any to discover his type. 

Nick’s gaze meanders down from where it was caught on Harry’s lips, slips over black satin laced together at the front with a crisscross of ribbon, tries to take in the way it opens and pours over his hips.

Triangles of skin peek out there before the lace of his shorts starts, pattern dense but not quite enough to conceal the firm line of a cock placed to one side. Nick screws up his hands, digging his nails into his palms to keep in some kind of noise it would probably be impolite to make. “Yeah, it’s – you’re – it’s _very_ —”

The smile widens and it’s the most Nick’s ever been alert to what desire feels like, the way all his cells — even the ones he’s not usually aware of like those under his tongue and on the inside of his elbows — thrum with this cartoon-like _let me at_ _‘_ _im_. Sharp breath filling his lungs, Nick extends a hand, aiming for a hug or something probably but Harry catches it, flattens it to his stomach, to the tense curve of silk, the boning like veins warm from Harry being right there underneath it. What Nick wants is to fit his palms right around Harry’s waist, see if he can make his fingers meet, imagines both his thumbs overlapping like another crisscross at the front of the corset as if he’s the one holding Harry together. The room buzzes like a hive off of a David Attenborough documentary though, workers everywhere fanning make-up onto chins and running back and forth with safety pins. He makes do with imagining his mouth over the dip where Harry’s chest disappears beneath the shiny material. The eyes of his sparrow tattoos or whatever the fuck they are peek through tiny ruches of black net. If he kissed they’d be judgementaljudgmental and that would be rough under his tongue and — _fuck_ ; Nick hasn’t wanted anything this much in a very long time. He leans into Harry’s ear. “Suddenly I’m really glad I owe you a blow job,” he says.

Harry meets Nick’s eye with a grin so slow it takes about half a lifetime to happen. “ _Really_.”

He wraps his fingers around Nick’s wrist and tugs him forward, takes a stumbling step back towards the curtain that runs around the entire room to create it.

“What are y— ”

Harry’s eyes shine with the kind of devilish mischief any perfume company would be thrilled to toss behind a product shot for something called _Rebel Intensity_ and he ferrets out a break in the material, throws the curtain over Nick’s shoulder. His mouth lands half on Nick’s before Nick can even check they haven’t just stumbled themselves on stage like that bit from _Love Actually_. Harry’s tongue pushing past his lips seems to summon all the lustful impulses he’s been fighting since Sunday school and Nick lets him in, hands restlessly seeking out a path around the accentuated dip of his waist to his back. There’s a ridge of concealed fasteners and Nick wants to say _fuck you feel amazing_ but when he tries he can’t quite remember how that works. He wants to touch everywhere at once, settles for sliding down to cup Harry’s arse. The lace makes his fingers slip and he’d really really really like to take one of those slow-motion Instagrams of Harry’s bum jiggling back into place. He runs his knuckles over Harry’s hips and settles in the nook of his waist again, because apparently he can’t get enough of the way the boning flares and creates a shape that surely wasn’t there before and yet feels as if it always should’ve been. 

Wrapping his arms around Nick’s neck, Harry takes a breath, the cold rush of air startling against Nick’s wet mouth. He looks down to where Nick’s hands fit not quite all the way around and whispers a harsh, “Holy shit.”

He’s hard — way too hard for where they are, some kind of concrete gully where the back of the lights and the speakers live — and Nick pictures the assistant to the assistant wrenching the curtain back, shoving Harry onto the catwalk with a nice lace tent on show.

“We should — ”

“ — hurry the fuck up is what we should do,” Harry says, voice like an avalanche of gravel. He scoops Nick in for another kiss, thumbs digging into the back of his neck, greedy and shaky and letting out these little grunts that shouldn’t go straight to Nick’s dick but do.

After a moment he manoeuvres Nick’s kisses down over his chin to his neck, tilting his head out of the way.

Nick licks the strain of muscle, bites at the woodsy dab of cologne, flurries kisses down his chest to where the material goes rough. He sinks down, knees wobbling as if he’s the one in impractical footwear, nuzzles where the satin splits on Harry’s stomach. He wishes there was more time but Harry’s breathing hard enough Nick feels dizzy on his behalf. He tastes the flash of skin there and settles, clinging to Harry’s thighs while the cold of the concrete rushes through his shins, scuffs the trim of the lacy shorts with his thumbs, tugging them down just enough to free the very tip of Harry’s dick.

Harry groans and shifts back, grabbing for a pillar with a hanging basket of lights and cables on it before Nick’s done more than breathe on him.

On the other side of the curtain someone shouts, “Five minutes everyone.”

It’s a modern tragedy Nick’s not going to be able to savour the sight, make a proper mental note of where the lace goes tight and distorts over the bulge of his dick, makes extra veins all the way down, but time’s not on his side and the way the seam digs into Harry’s balls is just begging for his tongue. Nick licks along it before making for the shiny trim, palming Harry’s thigh up and out of the way so he can get into the v between his legs. He sucks and he likes it, the thought he’s leaving damp patches all over these knickers Harry’ll be able to feel but no one will really be able to see. God bless lace being in this year. Nick frees more of his cock, just enough to do it properly. Pressing a kiss halfway he looks up to see Harry twitch, muscles in his shoulders standing out, tattoos juxtaposed with the wall of curving shiny fabric. He wets his lips and takes Harry in his mouth, inching down until lace and bollock hair tickles his skin.

Harry’s hips pulse and Nick steadies his dick with his thumbs as he moves back. Over the chatter outside, the tinkle of warm-up music, the noise of him sliding out of Nick’s mouth and pushing back in, the rustle of the fabric still manages to feel huge, and he imagines everyone must be able to if not hear then smell the fresh fabric and metal that’s colliding in his nose. 

The next time he looks up Harry’s clutching at his own hair, a rushed, needy moan breaking his lips apart. Thinking of the call with the stockings, the way Harry’s voice went at the thought of someone pulling them up for him, Nick runs his hand down Harry’s leg, smoothing the hair until he gets to where Harry’s foot sits encased in black suede. He maps it quickly with his fingers and runs back up rucking the hair the wrong way, the shove of Harry’s dick deeper into his mouth all the response he needs. He does it again and Harry’s hands drop, run over his chest, fingers trailing lower and lower over the satin. Nick sucks hard and Harry fumbles for his cheek like he’s desperate to feel himself there.

“Three minutes, where the hell is Harry Styles?”

Nick pulls off, jerking Harry hard and fast as he mouths at his fingers, breathing too shallow to really count. He noses at the patch of coarse hair above Harry’s dick, his brain freewheeling like its taken its feet off the pedals at the top of a hill. He glances up again, and Harry’s woozy and flushed above him, fingers slack as they dip into his mouth again before brushing his face with would-be casualness.

“Can you?”

Harry nods.

Nick kisses where his mouth is, getting a taste of lace and flesh and panic all at once, presses his tongue to the head of Harry’s dick, rubbing it against the pad of it.

Harry paws at his corset, tugs him closer by his hair, and a bit of Nick wants to see if he can make him faint, even though that’s probably wildly impractical under the circumstances. He tightens his lips enough to make Harry jerk into his mouth and emit a sound worryingly like a growl, digs his fingers into the flesh of Harry’s arse until he gets the idea to rock more purposefully into his mouth. He staggers a little on his heels before he finds a rhythm that echoes Nick’s stammering heart and Nick knows they don’t have time to mess around so he pushes a thumb into the softness between arse and balls.

“I’m gon — ”

Murmuring around him, not giving a shit if that was _gonna come_ or just _gone_ , Nick looks up, stroking there over the bunched up fabric until Harry groans and comes, lifting his fingers to bite at his knuckle to stifle the noise when it’s mostly too late.

Nick swallows and everything has gone vaguely grey around the edges as if someone’s just turned all the lights off and his eyes can’t adjust. He rests his head against Harry’s hipbone, breathes at the indent there, watching Harry’s cock retreat from wet and full to used.

Beyond the curtain there’s another shout for everyone to get to where they’re supposed to be and Zayn says he thinks Harry went to the toilet to chuck up, nervous like after last time.

Harry sniggers, wiping his face and blinking up at the false ceiling where the innards of the lights dangle for a moment before offering Nick a hand up.

He’s close enough to catch Harry’s fast, hot breath in his mouth and Nick can’t help it, the pads of his fingers need to trace the crisscross of ribbon holding him snug inside his satin casing. He kisses Harry’s shoulder, buries himself in his hair, staring at the little curls behind his ear, sliding a hand to Harry’s dick to tuck him back inside the knickers.

Harry flutters a kiss to Nick’s cheek. “I think I have to –- ”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll be here though, after?”

“Shut up and get out there.”

He slaps Harry’s arse as he fumbles for the break in the curtain and Harry grins back at him before he peels the velvet back enough to step through.

 

Nick has to practically canter to get to his seat in time for the start of the show. He squeezes in between one of the kids who hasn’t made a film since _Twilight_ and the guy with the hard-boiled egg head who does fashion for _The Guardian_ and whose name Nick can never remember. He crosses his legs and gets his phone out just in time for the lights to dip and the rumble of bass line to curl up from the speaker stacks dominating the end of the runway. The stark greyed outlines of the Turbine atrium tower above like a very modern cathedral, Lowry somewhere up there in his portrait wondering what all the fuss is about. As the screens mounted in front of the backdrop flicker with black and white bits of bodies, Nick closes his eyes and offers a prayer up to Lowry or god or whoever might be paying attention for Harry to stay upright. Once is a headline, twice is not going to be a good look and Nick’s not a bragger but he supposes objectively speaking what he just did wasn’t great for the structural integrity of anybody’s knees.

Zayn’s first out this time, body lithe under ripples of silk that coat him only as far as the top of his six pack. _Nothing as good as Zayn in a crop top_ , Nick thinks, the rawness in his throat throbbing to the rhythm of the track. The next few don’t distinguish themselves — a stocking to mid thigh here, a new take on the baby doll there — but Nick prickles all down his spine when Harry starts to walk. His hair is giving new meaning to dishevelled and his expression’s a bit dazed and startled. On top of that it’s like someone’s been at his skin with a warming filter. The corset shifts back and forth over his chest with the exaggerated movement of his hips, nipples bobbing up and then back down over the top in a way that should be ridiculous but at his side the _Twilight_ kid mutters about being on the turn. Maybe Nick should feel weird about everybody being able to see a dick that was recently in his mouth but he feels oddly proud of it, the way it’s bounced back enough to sit snug but not scandalously so against the front of the shorts. He waits until Harry’s past him to take a picture — his arse really would look great in slow motion. He ignores Kevin and his suspenders entirely, doesn’t really look up from the picture on his phone again until the final formation, all of them strutting out like a flock of migratory birds.

Nick’s breath turns to static in his windpipe. He wills Harry’s ankles not to fail him, for any bumps in the floor to flatten, but as Harry files past, his eyes are smiling, his fingers twitching in a minute little wave aimed right at Nick. By the time he comes back round again his mouth’s joined them, fluttering at the corner, and Nick gets a picture — a really nice one of Harry, even if everyone else is a blur.  

 

 

*

 

 

Backstage stinks of corn plasters and Zayn’s on his phone, scratching his chest and telling someone walking in a stiletto is well hard, man. Nick snaffles a mini sausage roll on his way to where Harry’s talking to a woman who’s most likely his agent — or what he thinks is a sausage roll but it’s all fishy inside when he bites in and he has to stop himself from making a face. He waits while Harry finishes his conversation with a touch of her arm and three air kisses and she goes off with Zayn, herding him with wafts of her handbag.

“I hate food that looks like one thing and tastes like another,” Nick says.

“Thanks for the constructive critique of my performance.”

Nick wrinkles his nose. “Preferred the last one if I’m honest but then my tastes have always been a bit low rent.”

Harry laughs, palms moving over the corset he’s still wearing as if memorising the shape.

“You need a hand with that?” 

At his nod, Nick touches Harry’s shoulder to make him turn around, quickly adds the nape of his neck to bits of people that aren’t attractive, unless your name is Harry Styles. Nick runs a finger over the seam bisecting his back until he finds the first little metal hook, pulls the material together so he can then gently ease it apart. He’s four down when Harry shivers and a glance in the starlet mirror tells Nick his eyes have fluttered closed. He leans back into Nick’s hands and Nick does the next fastening glacially slowly, nothing in the room except a finger of crooked metal sliding free and the sight of Harry’s sheeny skin as the fabric parts.

Harry holds the corset to himself when Nick’s done and Nick probably shouldn’t, not here where people spray on petty and irrelevant jealousy like knock-off cologne, but he brushes a kiss to Harry’s shoulder and stays there, as if he can hold Harry and whatever hefty thing he’s thinking up with his chin. “You ok there?”

“Fifty-fifty. This one was sort of a make or break thing according to, like, everyone.”

“You were amazing. A proper star.”

Mirror Harry’s eyes open but only enough that he can look at the floor. “What’s the bet this time?”

“Think all bets are off when it comes to you, Harry Styles.” Under Nick’s chin, Harry he shifts his weight but he makes no move to get undressed or dressed or whatever the term is for taking off knickers and putting on jeans. “You got another show to rush off to?”

Harry shakes his head. “Not until tomorrow.”

“Let me take you home, then? Bring that, if you want.”

 

 

*

 

 

The view from Harry’s lounge is mostly early morning fog and rooftop, like something out of _Mary Poppins_. Nick refreshes his Twitter before closing his phone, rinses the glass he borrowed to steal some orange juice with and checks his watch, but he’s up with plenty of time to spare thanks to Harry flailing in his sleep and landing a thunk on his forehead. He drifts over to the corkboard next to the fridge, where what look almost like Polaroids but not quite are pinned in a messy array. There’s Harry in a cable-knit jumper Nick recognises from a shoot on the show but from a totally different angle, as if he was caught unawares, him with a beanie pulled low over his eyes and a sulky expression, a snap of his feet in two kinds of shiny black shoes with the designer’s name stuck to the front on ripped Post-It labels.

A pad-pad-pad on the floor behind him and Nick smiles and goes to say, ‘morning, Pig,’ but she’s with the dog-sitter. He glances over his shoulder to make sure it’s not just a quirk of piping that sounds like a person, then gestures to the window.

“Put some clothes on, you’ll scare the pigeons.”

Harry yawns and bumps into Nick’s back, sliding his palm down Nick’s arm to where he’s fingering the corner of a picture of a field, lifting it up in order to make out the one beneath. It’s Harry’s face mostly buried inside a giant fur-lined parka. He guides Nick’s hand to another one — a grainy picture of a laptop with a familiar website caught halfway through what it’s playing and a fug of hotel room. _Fearne Cotton joins Grimmy to play Call or Delete_ is scrawled underneath in Sharpie. The one next to that’s Harry’s drink from the post-apocalyptic rave in New York, but a different one to that which he tweeted, Nick’s hands more in shot than the glass is. The caption says _Cornwall_.

“Did you totally fail geography? Is that what started you modelling?” Nick says.

“No, I just really hate Devon.”

Nick wants to laugh but everything’s so quiet at five in the morning.

“I like this one,” Harry says, and it’s a shot of his legs naked over his case on his flea market sofa.

“Really?” Nick says. “This one’s my favourite.”

He touches the corner of one of Harry in Central Park, a knee slung over the back of a bench, his phone in front of his nose and a smile just caught between his teeth. _Textual tension_.

“Can I take one?”

“What?”

“A picture. Of now.”

Unsure what he means, Nick shrugs, and Harry leans into him, walks his fingers down the worktop to Nick’s phone. He swivels it towards them, scoops it up, and presses to light it up, holding it for Nick to enter the code. He selects the app and turns the camera and Nick’s just reaching for his hand to bat it down, “Hold on let me at least do something with my hair.”

The frame freezes a picture of Harry’s arm around Nick’s middle and their hands, all a bit out of focus.

“Send it to me?” he says. “I’ll get it printed with the next batch.”

“Don’t you want to take a better one?”

“Nope. When it’s hurried and you look stupid and nothing’s quite right, it’s real.”

“What’s the caption?”

“You can pick, if you want. When I get it back.”

Nick takes his phone. “Before you get carried away — wasn’t going to show you this ‘cos I thought you’d be upset but — ” He thumbs to the photo he saved off of Twitter.  “Nice love bite,” Nick says, nudging his phone towards Harry’s face.

Harry goes cross-eyed taking in his flushed and corseted self, the red splodge bold as anything on his neck. “Where’s that from?”

“Everywhere but specifically _Vogue_ online.”

Topped off with the smirk and the way he’s standing, all poise and easy sexuality with photographers at his shoe boots and a corridor of angles, baby-dolls, and stark faces behind him, it’s quite the thing.

He meets Nick’s eye, a bit quavery of brow and mouth like he needs a cue on which face to go for. “I made it fashion, right?”

“No one's laughing, not this time. Oh come here,” Nick says.

Tangling his fingers in Harry’s hair to kiss him is totally different to ruffling it, all right?

Harry swallows when Nick pulls back, rocks as if he’s still wearing heels. “I got to get to work.”

“You coming to the show later?”

“Why, you need a fluffer?”

“Yes. And a shout out, please. I have to leave at eight thirty, so before that.”

“Are you always going to be this demanding?”

“Probably,” Harry says. “You up for that?”

_Is Nick up for that._

Nick arches his eyebrow and by way of reply edges around him. He makes it all the way to the door before the prickles of Harry’s panic on the back of his neck make his face crack, but he hides it quite successfully swiping a jumper — new season berry and freckles of grey mohair — from the flea market sofa and tugging it over his head. 


End file.
